When last year’s Grammy Awards ended, it was clear that Adele was the show’s sweetheart, hauling home six gramophone statuettes.

This year’s ceremony didn’t have as clear a winner as the British sensation, who added to her lifetime total with a win in the “Best Pop Solo Performance” category, but it put a spotlight on artists outside the vaunted pop realm.

Dan Auerbach, one-half of rock duo the Black Keys, took home the most awards for the night, reeling in four Grammys, including those for “Best Rock Song” and “Best Rock Album.” While the Black Keys won three awards in 2011, this year’s show felt like a coming out party of sorts, which arguably included the strongest live performance of the night with “Lonely Boy.” The pair, however, were shut out of the bigger categories of the night, namely “Record Of The Year,” which went to Gotye, and “Album of the Year,” which went to Mumford & Sons’ Babel.

Accepting the award on behalf of his band, Marcus Mumford and his so-called “sons" claimed the show’s biggest prize, which despite their 12 total nominations was only their second award (the band had won earlier in the day for their role in the long-form video winner Big Easy Express).

“We were in the [pre-telecast] stuff and we had six nominations ... and one after the other [the winner was] like Black Keys, Black Keys,” said Mumford. “We thought last year was Adele’s year and this year was the Black Keys’ year… We didn’t really care about winning.”

Some may see Mumford & Sons as representing a return to commercial viability for Americana/folk. Babel was the fourth biggest selling album in the U.S. in 2012, moving 1.4 million units.

While some may debate electronic dance music (EDM) and its place in “real music” there’s no denying the genre’s growth at the award’s show. Sonny Moore, better known as Skrillex, swept the traditional EDM categories, winning three awards for “Remix Recording,” “Dance Recording” and “Dance/Electronica Album.” The number two grossing electronic DJ with revenue of $15 million in 2012, Skrillex is just one manifestation of how the industry has turned its attention from typically pop-focused electronic contributions to “the scene that came out of the underground,” said Moore.

“The difference [now] is the culture we come from is what’s getting the limelight,” he later added.

That limelight is coming not only from the Recording Academy, but from the business side as well. Officials at the International Music Summit recently noted that the EDM industry could be worth over $4 billion annually, and current negotiations for DJ residency deals in places like Las Vegas suggest that figure could be much bigger as more revenue is derived from live shows as opposed to album or song sales.

While the awards seemed spread out across various artists this year when compared to 2012, one nominee who came away empty-handed was Chris Brown. Polarizing because of his out-of-studio antics, he lost out to brawl partner Frank Ocean in the “Urban Contemporary Album” category, and was later singled out on Twitter for failing to give the winner a standing ovation with the rest of the crowd.

If early indications are correct, it would also seem as if CBS is another loser on the night. Last year’s production was the second most-viewed show in event history with 39 million tuning in, mainly because of Whitney Houston’s death the night before. Given the high bar set last year, it looks nearly impossible for CBS to break that number.